Last week I gave a talk on ‘Unique Selling Propositions – The Innovation in the Outliers’. I presented a number of market trends. During my talk I encouraged participants to ask questions and share their own experiences. One of the changes we talked about is the centralisation/decentralisation trend. Some companies are centralising resources, workflow, funds, and decisions. Others are horizontalising, spreading out the decision-making and resources. A participant worked in the creative industry. He saw how there was a big push to decentralise products and services, work with a collection of contractors instead of one large entity, and seek revenues from alternative sources such as crowdfunding to get projects off of the ground.

Another attendee had a foot in two worlds: one product she was selling was through a highly centralised model and a second product she was selling was through a highly decentralised model. There’s value in aligning yourself with a trend. There’s also value in intentionally not participating in it. To generate the most benefit for your clients and dollar for your efforts, you need to understand how your target market will want to receive their product. Whenever you hear about market trends, I encourage you to think about these questions:

If I adopt the new behaviour – will it lead me to new customers?

Will those customers have bigger wallets than my current customers?

Will I be able to relate to those customers and them to me?

Will you be able to offer more value to those customers?

In adopting a new trend, can I incorporate other trends as well to maximise my impact? For example, if you’re going after underserviced markets, is there a way that you can also automate some of your services or operations?

Have you recently changed some of your business practices to incorporate market changes? How did that work out for you? I’d like to know more about it. ​